KBIM Radio is celebrating two important anniversaries this year. June marked 60 years since the station first hit the airwaves.

“We are a heritage radio station,” [auth] said News director Tom A. Ruiz. A heritage station is the term used for an AM radio station that has broadcast in a specific format for a long period of time.

“We applied for our FCC license in 1951,” said Don Niccum, who is on the air daily starting at 9 a.m. “The station started broadcasting in 1953.”

He explained that when the station first applied for its license, they were supposed to be based in Clovis, but the license came through for Roswell.

“We are the oldest continuing station in Roswell and in Chaves County,” said station manager Kevin Bonner.

KBIM is also one of the oldest stations in New Mexico. “KOB was first, but we’re one of the top ten,” Bonner said.

In addition, this year is also the anniversary of its public services program, Round Table. Niccum said: “Round Table turned 40 this year. It started in 1974.”

Bonner joked that at the age of 60, in two years, the station could retire. However, there is little likelihood of that. September will see the third anniversary of KBIM going country, as Roswell’s “Country Giant” station.

What have they done to commemorate the event? “Nothing, really. The governor said she wanted to do something to mark the occasion, but we have been too busy with the day-to-day running of the business,” Bonner said.

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Jessica Palmer has had 26 books published, by such firms as Pocket Books, Harper Collins, McFarland, and Scholastic. She was nominated for the HWA's award for best first novel and listed in Germany's Lexicon as one of the top 200 writers of the 20th Century. Her works have been published in every English-speaking country in the world and translated into Italian, Danish, Japanese, Russian, German and Rumanian. In her spare time, she works with wildlife as a wildlife rescuer.